Thanks for that. By the way, it may be worth mentioning -- for anyone picking up the radar/spider aspect of your question -- that radar or spider charts are parallel coordinate plots rendered in polar coordinates and that -parplot- from SSC offers parallel coordinate plots.
Nick
[email protected]
José Maria
As always, very useful. Thanks a lot.
Nick Cox
> The question of radar or spider plots has arisen before. Typing
>
> . findit radar
>
> would have pointed you to Adrian Mander's -radar- on SSC. Two generic
> problems for radar or spider graphs are comparing values that are not
> close by and comparing with numeric scales, which are usually only tacit.
>
> Various graphs for circular data are included in -circular- on SSC.
> Although set up for data measured in degrees, they are applicable to some
> extent to data on other circular scales. I gave a talk on this package at
> the London users' meeting in September.
>
> I don't agree that data that are seasonal (diurnal, etc.) are usually
> better plotted in circular diagrams. In fact 80 or 90 years ago, Brinton
> and Karsten were scathing about such graphs in their compendia, e.g.
>
> Karsten, K. 1923. Graphs and charts. New York: Prentice-Hall, p.237 "When
> the clock-chart has been well and carefully drawn, it is ready for the
> waste-basket."
>
> Karsten is perhaps more widely remembered for having had the basic idea of
> a hedge fund; these days that may not seem much of an honour.
>
> For more constructive suggestions on plotting seasonal data -- adaptable
> to other cycles -- see
>
> SJ-9-2 gr0037 . . . . . . . . Stata tip 76: Separating seasonal time
> series
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . N. J.
> Cox
> Q2/09 SJ 9(2):321--326 (no
> commands)
> tip on separating seasonal time series
>
> SJ-6-3 gr0025 . . . . . . . . . . . . Speaking Stata: Graphs for all
> seasons
> (help cycleplot, sliceplot if installed) . . . . . . . . . N. J.
> Cox
> Q3/06 SJ 6(3):397--419
> illustrates producing graphs showing time-series seasonality
>
> The earlier of these papers is accessible to all in .pdf form on the Stata
> Journal website, as it came out just over three years ago. It's one of the
> Speaking Stata columns I'm most fond of.
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